Mahmud Ahmed

Mahmud Ahmed (born 1944) was the director of Pakistan's ISI from 1999 to 2001, succeeding Ziauddin Butt and preceding Jamshed Gulzar Kayani.

Biography
Mahmud Ahmed was born in Peshawar in the British Empire in 1944, and joined the Pakistani Army in 1966. He served in the Bangladesh Liberation War against India and fought as a commander of ISI (Pakistani special forces) in the Soviet-Afghan War on the Mujahideen side.

In the 1990s, Ahmed fought alongside Taliban militia against the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan during the Afghan Civil War, playing a major role as the liaison between Pakistan and the insurgents. With the coup against Nawaz Sharif by Pervez Musharraf in 1999, he became the director of the ISI. As ISI director, he fought against India in the Kargil War before retiring in 2001.